Hosting community meetings in MS Teams

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Written by: The Coop Team - Fred Hutch Bioinformatics & Data Science Cooperative

Last month, we highlighted a few tips and tricks for holding meetings remotely through MS Teams. As we settle into more time working from home, we’d like to share a few more pointers for those of you interested in scheduling and hosting meetings for the Coop Community.

If you’re scheduling a private meeting, it’s easiest to create an invitation in Outlook, add individuals to the invitation, and select “Teams Meeting” so the connection details are included for all participants.

If you’re scheduling public meetings or office hours through the Coop Team in Microsoft Teams, you’ll be hosting meetings for anyone to attend in either the Community Groups or Office Hours channel. You have two choices as host, which will allow anyone in the community to join your call:

  1. Host creates meeting each time: At the time of the meeting, go to the relevant channel and click on the video camera button beneath the chat window. A window to select options for the call will appear, including a space at the top to enter a title for the meeting. Enter an informative label (e.g., R User Group, noon to 1 pm, April 9), then click “Meet now” to start the meeting.
  2. Schedule a regularly occurring meeting: Use the calendar option in MS Teams to schedule a meeting. In the “Add channel” field, select the appropriate channel (either Community Groups or Office Hours). If your meeting is recurring, you can select repeating options here too. Your meeting will be automatically created at the scheduled time.

Whichever option you choose, keep in mind:

  • After you create the meeting, anyone in the Coop Team will be able to see and join.
  • While in the meeting, you’ll also be able to click on the three dots in the toolbar, select “Show meeting details” and then click “Copy join info”. You can paste the subsequent output into an email or Slack channel.
  • Please contact coophelp at fredhutch.org to ensure your event is listed on our calendar with appropriate connection details included.

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